The material
These are not watercolours on a flat sheet of paper, framed behind glass. The physical construction is the point: a handmade landscape for a single pigment to settle, catch, and separate.
Historically, watercolour has been confined to paper and placed behind glass. That tradition protects the medium. It also flattens it, and it holds the viewer at a distance.
This collection lifts watercolour onto canvas. Acid-free tissue is applied first, then layers of watercolour ground. Pigment is allowed to pool in the creases and catch on the ridges. The finished work is sealed with archival wax, so the surface can remain unglazed — in direct contact with the room.
Transparent watercolour lets light pass through the mineral particles, strike the white ground, and return. The graphic shapes glow from within. The friction of the series is this: a disciplined, four-tone architecture delivered through a medium that will not sit still.
01 · Tissue
Acid-free tissue paper is applied directly to canvas. Creases, ridges and valleys become the physical foundation of every portrait. That texture is wrapped around all four edges onto the rear of the stretcher, so the object is complete from every side.
The surface is not a backdrop. It is the first decision in the work.
02 · Ground
Watercolour ground is built in three layers over the tissue. It creates a receptive, brilliant white surface without erasing the handmade topography underneath. Light will later pass through the pigment and bounce from this ground — the source of the work’s luminosity.
03 · Pigment
Each portrait is executed in a single professional pigment. The visual depth of the painting depends entirely on that pigment’s personality — how it granulates, oxidises, splits, or holds together — and on the unpredictable way it meets the textured ground.
The hanging order of the exhibition follows these pigment relationships: a chromatic sequence, not a political one.
04 · Granulation
Value boundaries are mapped by hand — a strict economy of form, tested to the limit of how much can be stripped away while the person remains unmistakable. Then the chemistry is invited in. Heavy mineral particles break apart, pool, and settle in the deep creases.
That unpredictable settling is a material metaphor for the journeys themselves: distinct, rugged, and not designed to be smooth.
05 · Wax
Each completed portrait is sealed with three layers of Jacquard Dorland’s Archival Wax. The coating forms a durable, moisture-resistant barrier against smudging and environmental damage without flattening the texture beneath.
The works sit in handmade white timber floating frames. A shadow gap leaves the wrapped, pigmented edges visible — the physical boundary of the object kept honest.
Look at the surface
What happens to the pigment where the tissue paper rises?
On a screen, these works register as flat graphic shapes. In the room, light moves through transparent colour, hits the white ground, and returns. The ridges catch paint; the valleys hold it. That is why a gallery visit, and a close-up on these pages, matter more than a single photograph of the whole face.
Each portrait page includes a detail view for this reason. Scan the wall label in the gallery, and the digital portal should feel like stepping closer — not like leaving the exhibition for a website.
The artist’s vision